So, today I took up smoking. I’ve wanted to for at least a year now; I’ve been researching the hows and whys and wherefores, and finally today I took the plunge. Hot Smoking at Home. Smoked tomatoes and smoked mozzarella.

The first time I can remember coming across Clafoutis was in the early 1990′s and I had a housemate who knew a lot about food, and who tried lots of new dishes and loved to bake.  One afternoon we decided to try a cherry clafoutis recipe, which I think was from her Maggie Beer book. [...]

Ultimately, I cook for others because I want to be liked.  If you bring the cake, someone will always be your friend.  So I like to have a few standby, easy to make, crowd pleasing recipes on hand. Tonight we had a gathering to celebrate my neighbours 86th birthday.  No small occasion I’m sure you’ll [...]

Winter well-and-truly struck Melbourne last week.  It’s been quite a while since we’ve had a “proper” winter, cold and drizzly, requiring stew and stodge to keep the inner fires burning. Last Sunday I wanted a cup of tea and a pikelet or  two.  Warm liquid, and delicious stodge! While I was mixing up a batch, [...]

A couple of weeks ago I went to the markets with friend Mellie, half of Tummyrumbles. We spied “tamed nettles” lovingly picked off their stems and bagged for us by one of the stall holder’s sons as his “pin money” job.  I quietly suggested that nettle gnocchi may have to be in order to Mellie. [...]

Now that I have found a ready supply of free range chicken frames I find myself making chicken stock regularly.   It is so easy and lends itself to a quiet Sunday afternoon at home, then to be turned into soup or risotto for an easy Sunday meal.  You can also use up any not [...]

We recently dined at Circa The Prince in St Kilda, and I was really surprised by the Chestnut soup we were served.  I asked chef, Matt Wilkinson, if he would share the recipe with me. He graciously agreed. The soup I made isn’t quite as refined as the one they serve at Circa but the [...]

A few weeks ago we got together for a feast of Momofuku themed dinner party.  Master baker Anne brought along some “Compost Cookies” from David Chang’s Milk Bar restaurant.   They were chewy and crunchie and salty and sweet and very very moorish.  I was stuffed full of pork, and there was “Crack Pie” to [...]

This delicious torte is actually pretty easy to make, and works well with frozen or preserved cherries, but is perhaps best in the middle of cherry season.   The fresh local juicey cherries that I buy from the Farmers’ Markets  were my inspiration to try this recipe. That and I almost always have all the ingredients I [...]

I’ve been splurging on cookbooks lately – the strong Aussie dollar has been making it too difficult to resist. The Momofuku Cook book (by David Chang and Peter Meehan) arrived after Christmas and has been inspiring me non-structurally for a few weeks. By that I mean I haven’t sat down, read through a recipe, gone [...]